The role of rhythm in the development of speech perception and production

与任何其他物种不同，人类是有节奏的生物。语言和音乐这两种独特的人类交流系统的声音是有节奏地组织起来的。它们都显示了声音的循环模式，如音节、音符和短语，这些都是在时间上可以预测的。在演讲中，掌握节奏和时机是一项至关重要的技能，以便在交谈中互动并保持时间一致。尽管节奏研究在过去十年中取得了显著进展，但人们对节奏如何影响言语知觉和产生的潜在认知和运动机制仍然知之甚少，特别是在发育人群中。目前尚不清楚，在发育过程中，言语是使用言语特有的还是/和领域通用的节奏机制产生和感知的。回答这个问题对于我们理解不同沟通技能(音乐、言语)的节奏能力是如何相互交织在一起的，并可能在不同发展阶段有利于言语发展具有重要意义。为了阐明这些问题，本研究计划将对节奏(特别是预测时间)在婴幼儿和儿童/青少年获得关键言语能力(即言语声音感知、流畅言语产生)方面的作用提供新的见解。第一系列实验的目的是确定语音和歌曲中的节奏预测是否有助于婴儿在第一年的生活中处理歌唱和口语刺激中的母语和非母语语音。在这里，将测量振荡动力学(使用脑电)，以检查婴儿在呈现或多或少可预测的音乐和语言节奏时，是如何神经编码语音的。第二个系列的实验验证了这一假设，即儿童/青春期后期流利的言语产出的发展受到精确的、领域通用的预测计时技能的制约。参与者将包括患有和不患有发育性言语流利性障碍(口吃)的儿童和青少年(9-17岁)。使用音乐和语音同步任务(如手指敲击或节拍器说话)，将比较两组人对听觉目标准确预测运动反应和确定反应时间的能力。此外，还将研究提高非语言同步技能是否也会影响言语流利性技能。音乐和语音的计时能力指数将被用来确定一般领域的计时过程是否推动(有缺陷的)语音流畅性的发展。这些预期的发现将为婴儿和青少年的语音习得中计时机制的作用提供新的见解。总体而言，这些发现将促进我们对语音和音乐中潜在的节奏处理(神经)认知联系的了解，并为开发新的应用程序以促进患有延迟或言语障碍的儿童的言语发展提供机会。

Unlike any other species, humans are rhythmic beings. The sounds of language and music, our two uniquely human communication systems, are rhythmically organized. They both display recurrent patterns of sound, such as syllables, notes and phrases that are predictable in time. In speech, mastering rhythm and timing is a crucial skill to interact and to keep in time together during conversation. Despite significant progress in rhythm research in the last decade, the underlying cognitive and motor mechanisms of how rhythm shapes speech perception and production are still poorly understood, especially in developmental populations. It is unclear, whether, during development, speech is produced and perceived using speech-specific or / and domain-general rhythmic mechanisms. To answer this question has important consequences for our understanding of how rhythmic capacities of different communication skills (music, speech) intertwine and may benefit speech development at different stages of development. To shed new light on these issues, the present research program will provide new insights into the role of rhythm (in particular, predictive timing) for the acquisition of critical speech capacities in infants and children/adolescents (i.e., speech sound perception, fluent speech production). The aim of a first series of experiments is to determine whether rhythmic predictions in speech and song help infants in their first year of life to process native and non-native speech in sung and spoken stimuli. Here, oscillatory dynamics will be measured (using EEG) to examine how infants neurally encode speech sounds when presented in more or less predictable rhythms of music and language. The second series of experiments tests the hypothesis that the development of fluent speech production in late childhood / adolescence is conditioned by precise, domain-general predictive timing skills. Participants will include children and adolescents (9-17 years) with and without a developmental speech fluency disorder (stuttering). The capacity to precisely predict and time a motor response to an auditory target will be compared in both groups using musical and speech synchronization tasks (such as finger tapping or speaking with a metronome). Moreover, it will be examined if improving skills in non-verbal synchronization also affects speech fluency skills. Indices of timing ability to music and speech will be used to determine whether domain-general timing processes drive the (faulty) development of speech fluency. The expected findings will provide new insights into the role of timing mechanisms in infants' and adolescents' speech acquisition. Overall, the findings will advance our knowledge on the (neuro)cognitive links underlying rhythmic processing in speech and music and provide opportunities to develop novel applications to foster speech development in children with delays or speech disorders.